Trivia: Appeared in the Broadway production of Titanic in 1997. Received the P.T. Barnum Award for Excellence in Entertainment from Tufts University in 2014. Serves on the Tisch Gala Committee as a distinguished alumnus. Teaches at New York University.

Trivia: Actor Wendell Pierce spent the first 20 years or so of his career predominantly essaying character roles as authority figures, with many bit parts as cops, attorneys, government agents, and ministers to his credit. Pierce devoted the majority of his first decade to big-screen work (including such projects as The Money Pit, Family Business, and Get on the Bus); by 1995, he began to accept occasional bit parts on television, and indeed, this venue ultimately brought Pierce higher billing, when he was tapped to play two roles: Conrad "Candyman" Jones on Third Watch and Detective William "Bunk" Moreland on HBO's police drama The Wire. Pierce remained most active on-stage, however, where his powerhouse presence illuminated an impressive array of classical dramas, among them Cymbeline (1989), Antigone (1993), and Tartuffe (1999). Over the coming years, Pierce would find additional success on a series about his hometown, Treme.

Trivia: Blue-eyed, raven-haired Canadian actress Gina Holden first appeared onscreen in the early 2000s with minor supporting roles, typically in fantasy and horror vehicles. These included Fantastic Four (2005) and Final Destination 3 (2006). Holden carried this genre identification over to her first major television role, when, in 2007, she signed to play Coreen Fennel on the vampire-themed fantasy series Blood Ties, opposite fellow Canadian Christina Cox. Around the same time, she also appeared in a regular role as Dale Arden in the sci-fi series Flash Gorden.

Trivia: After graduating high school, worked as a nurse; has since played a nurse in several TV shows and films. Started her acting career with stage shows, appearing in the play First Breeze of Summer in 1994. Her character on Scrubs was written out of the show when they expected it to be canceled; when it was instead renewed, she was written back on with a new character. Appeared in over 260 episodes of Days of Our Lives between 2008 and 2015. Marched in the 83rd Annual Hollywood Christmas Parade, which honored the cast of Days of Our Lives.

Trivia: At the age of 6, he started his career as an actor.Made his debut as an actor in television in 2006.Made his debut as a producer in 2013.Has Canadien and American Citizenship.Is the co-founder of the 4 AM Film Studios production company.

Trivia: A square-jawed blonde with steely blue eyes, actor Neal McDonough had essayed every role from psychopath to dunce before roles in HBO's Band of Brothers and Minority Report (2002) found him gaining a reputation as the man to cast if a script called for a dependable, all-American tough guy. Though his screen presence has been growing steadily in the first years of the new millennium, it wasn't long ago that McDonough was considering abandoning his career as an actor. A native of Dorchester, MA, easygoing McDonough attended Barnstable High School before graduating from Syracuse University and later training as an actor at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts and Sciences. Taking to the stage following his graduation, it wasn't long before McDonough was appearing in such productions as Waiting for Lefty and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in 1991 he took home a Best Actor Dramalogue Award for his role in Away Alone. McDonough began his move into film with a minor role in 1990's Darkman, and the same year appearances in such popular television series as China Beach and Quantum Leap ensured that his face would remain a familiar one to audiences. Following a turn as Lou Gehrig in the 1991 made-for-television feature Babe Ruth, McDonough's television career began to take off, and through the mid-'90s he found frequent work on the small screen with the exception of such features as Angels in the Outfield (1994). A childhood dream came true for the lifelong Star Trek fan when he was cast in the Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and that same year McDonough voiced Dr. Bruce Banner in the animated television series The Incredible Hulk. His career shifting increasingly toward feature work in the late '90s, McDonough took on memorable roles in such features as Circles (1998) and the quirky pseudo-horror film Ravenous (1999). Though the frustration of never receiving a truly gratifying role caused him to reconsider his chosen career, McDonough's big break was just around the corner. Cast as 1st Lt. Lynn "Buck" Compton in director Steven Spielberg's acclaimed HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, McDonough's role as the troubled soldier who suffers a nervous breakdown in the chaos of war finally gave the actor a chance to flex his chops and caught the attention of series producer Spielberg, who immediately approached him for a role in Minority Report. Cast as the best friend of Tom Cruise's character, McDonough was now a recognizable Hollywood figure and was quickly developing a solid screen persona. Subsequently returning to the small screen for the television series Boomtown, McDonough was cast in the role formerly occupied by Jimmy Smits, who dropped out at the last minute. As McDonough began preparation for roles in Timeline (2003) and Walking Tall (2004), it seems as if the dependable actor might finally be edging toward leading-man status. Though that may not have been the case when McDonough accompanied his onscreen brothers into the woods to expose the skeletons in the family closet in the 2005 drama American Gothic, a more amiable turn as a dedicated friend attempting to help his best pal find a man to father her child in the comedy drama Silent Men went a long way in making the actor a bit more likeable to viewers. The following year McDonough could be seen treading water opposite Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher in the Coast Guard drama The Guardian. He continued to work steadily in a variety of films including Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers, The Hitcher, I Know Who Killed Me, 88 Minutes, and Traitor. In 2008 he joined the cast of the successful ABC drama Desperate Housewives in that program's fifth season.

Trivia: Made his feature-film debut in Laws of Gravity (1992), which starred another Purchase College alum, Edie Falco. Also worked with Edie Falco on HBO's The Sopranos and Showtime's Nurse Jackie.

Trivia: Comedic blonde actress Rachael Harris has found plenty of ways to make audiences laugh, whether it meant commenting on pop culture for VH1's I Love the '80s or appearing in quirky commercials for Quaker rice cakes. A veteran of the Los Angeles improve troupe the Groundlings, Harris transitioned to the screen as a correspondent for the popular news-parody The Daily Show. With her horn-rimmed glasses and tightly wound persona, Harris immediately found her niche in on-screen comedy, garnering fans with her own brand of straight-faced delivery. Harris would occasionally take on completely different characters for TV and film roles like her part in 2009's The Soloist, but the comedian more often played off of her own signature style, especially for comedies like Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, The Hangover, and Evan Almighty. In 2010, she played the lead character's mother in Diary of Wimpy Kid, reprising the role in two sequels. Harris would also find continued success on the small screen,on shows like Reno 911!, In the Motherhood, and Notes from the Underbelly and as a prolific guest star on a number of series. In 2016, Harris landed a series regular role on Lucifer, playing Lucifer's theraprist.

Trivia: Born in 1980 and raised in her hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canadian actress Carly Pope quickly carved out an acting niche for herself by honing in on socially progressive dramatic material about hot-button issues, and specializing in rebellious, alternative characterizations -- assertive and aggressive counterculture figures. The actress landed her breakthrough part on the WB series Popular (1999-2001) -- a satirical program that relentlessly skewered the conventions of such teen soapers as Beverly Hills 90210. After chalking up a long and full cinematic resumé that found the up-and-comer tackling scattered roles in features including Orange County (2002), Window Theory (2004), and The French Guy (2005), Pope returned to television once again for a multi-episode turn on the controversial series Dirt -- a wicked, acerbic satire about a pathologically ruthless tabloid publisher (Courteney Cox Arquette). On that program, Pope played a lesbian drug pusher who aggressively "hooks" and seduces one of the publication's prize starlets. The actress followed it up with a key supporting role in the comedy Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007), as Shulamith, a radical feminist graffiti painter. She appeared in Yeti in 2008, and the next year she joined the cast of 24 in that show's seventh season. In 2011 she was cast in Textuality.

Trivia: Father was a real-estate attorney. Studied acting in the Stanislavsky School in Dublin in addition to her education at New York University. Best known for her work as ticket agent Fay Cochran on the NBC sitcom Wings, which ran from 1990 to 1997.

Trivia: Played cello with the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Sang in the Portland Opera Children's Chorus. Her family relocated to New Orleans when she was a senior in high school. Made her Broadway debut as Crissy in Hair in 2010.

Trivia: Erik Palladino was supposed to join the family's heat contracting business. Raised in Yonkers by his schoolteacher mother and contractor father, the 12-year-old Palladino caught the acting bug from Robert De Niro's famed performance as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. He quickly joined a local children's repertory company and soon began hosting a heavy metal television show in New York. But like many actors, the adult Palladino took the long road to success. He built an arrest record, struggled through New York's Marymount Manhattan College, sang in a mediocre indie rock band, and survived several canceled television shows. By the late '90s, Palladino had a familiar face -- as a regular on Comedy Central, a voluble MTV video jockey, an indolent stepson on Murphy Brown, and Jennifer Love Hewitt's unctuous cousin in Can't Hardly Wait (1998) -- but not a well-known name. However, perseverance and ubiquity will lead to stardom and, in 1999, Palladino scored two plum roles: the part of an American sailor opposite Matthew McConaughey in U-571 and a coveted slot as Dr. Dave Malucci on NBC's top-rated ER. Both characters are Italian-American; both characters pigeonhole Palladino as the insolent, self-important bastard. Yet, his performances project the strength of an actor who has been around the bend and can create brazen men that are not simply ogres, but refreshingly forthright, occasionally tender, and always heroic. Despite a public outcry and an Internet petition to keep him on the show, Palladino left ER in 2001. He then added to his movie credits -- which already included This Space Between Us (2000) with fellow ER star Alex Kingston and Finder's Fee (2000) with James Earl Jones -- by starring in the "Disco Inferno" segment of the VH1' Strange Frequency (2001). He also began racing cars in the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Though his career forced him to relocate to California, Palladino remains a die-hard New Yorker and a loyal Yankees fan.